Kang and I worked together for a couple of years and had last seen each other over 18 years back. No surprise to any one of you – I had kept up with him – if not anything else, thru that once in a year birthday call. Then, in 2008, he learnt that he had Stage 2 cancer. That same week, his mom was diagnosed with cancer too. I kept up with him thru Facebook updates on his health and stories of not giving up biking thru everything and used to send him encouraging words of support on fighting the good fight.

And then this September, after many many rounds of chemo and radio therapy and seven long years of perseverant “it ain’t over till it is over”, he was declared in remission. For the last few years, I have been wanting to spend some quality one on one time with Kang to get his perspective of life as he went thru clearly a life-altering phase.

Today was my day. I had set up a one on one dinner with him and I had a few simple questions for him. The evening was a great life lesson for me. I am going to write it up as a short interview style writeup here.

The opening was enough to tell me that I am going to learn a lot this evening.
Rajib: “I am sorry you had to go thru this tough phase in life.”
Kang: “No, no. I am glad I did. If I had the power to change anything in my past life, this is not something I am touching. I would go thru it again, if I had to.”

Discussing death.
RR: “Really? You were not afraid that you were going to die?”
KL: “Rajib, we are all going to die. I just found out that day a possible way that I might die. If I did not wake up every day worried that I would die some day and I could not change it, why should the knowledge of one possible way I might die worry me any more?”
RR: “Good point. But death denotes some kind of finality, does it not?”
KL: “Well, it is all in how think about it. Are you the same Rajib when I met you 18 years back? Are you the same Rajib when you were ten years old? As a person, your values, your likings, your passion – in fact, every body cell of yours has changed. Does that mean you have died? Rather, does it not mean that the Rajib of forty years back is dead. All of you have is a small subset of disjointed memories. See, every morning, we wake up with a small part of us having died and replaced by a new part. Physical death is nothing but a culmination of that process. It is a passage of life. You cannot accept life if you cannot accept death as a natural part of it”.

Appreciating life.
RR: “Does that not then lead to a nihilistic view of life – how much does it matter if it is going to end in death anyways?”.
KL: “ Quite to the contrary, it makes you appreciate life a lot more. You get a very different perspective towards why you live…”
RR: “I have always thought that acceptance of mortality is the best setter of priority”.
KL: ”… exactly. In my case things like job promotion and such – as an example – have become far more meaningless. It is more important for me to spend time in the ways I want to spend time. When you go thru these kind of phases in life, you get some sense knocked into you. One of them is how fruitless your life’s day to day aspirations have become.”
RR: ”Because you let others drive your priorities?”
KL: “Indeed”.
RR: “It is true that as human beings, we are more focused on what we don’t have than what we have.”

It is not really your life.
RR: “I get that. But here is a dilemma I have. I can see how you took a long view of the road and decided to take cancer in a proper perspective and obviously your mental strength helped you get over your physical challenges. But you did not know you will win the battle. More importantly, your family did not know that. For all the great talk of perspectives in life, the fact has to be that your wife was suddenly staring at the prospect of raising two kids who were yet to be five years old all by herself. The kids – and I do not know how much they understood this – was looking at the real possibility of losing dad for ever. How did they deal with it?”
KL: “And don’t forget my mom. She survived her own cancer. And then she was looking at possibly losing her son. It is a sense of helplessness only we as parents can truly understand.”
RR: “Yes. So all this self-realization – how does that help them?”
KL: “I am not sure I have a good answer for you. You can only control your own life. But I will tell you that my wife took this in her stride and dealt with the whole thing with a whole lot level of self assuredness than my mom did. But I did realize something else.”
RR: “What?”
KL: “This life of yours that you think is yours is not just yours. There are other people who have a say in it and need to have a say in it. You have to also decide your priorities thinking about them.”
RR: “You do understand the inherent conflict that can often create?”
KL: “Deeply so.”

Dealing with Pain:
RR: “So, talk to me about all the pain you had to endure. Chemotherapy and radio therapy is not fun for anybody”.
KL: “Radio therapy is much worse”
RR: “How so?”
KL: “In chemo, you are getting controlled poison. Your body violently reacts and you feel it and the body will try to sleep it thru because of the tiredness and lack of energy. In radio therapy, you will completely drained and wasted but you are really not tired. So, you cannot sleep. You just stay awake going thru that painful feeling.”
RR: “So, what lessons do you have for me as you dealt with that pain?”
KL: “First, that pain is a forward indicator. It merely indicates that there might be a breakdown coming. But usually it is a long time coming. And with evolution of human beings, we are feeling pain much earlier than we used to. Because we pay attention to the smallest pain – the faintest early indicator. And when you go thru cancer, you realize that the actual break point is way way far out. In fact, I biked thru all the time that I was ailing and my body still did not break down – meaning I did not die, did I?”
RR: “So, you think it is all in the mind.”
KL: “A big part. Sure.”

Small things in life.
RR: “I have to ask you something. For all this mental fortitude – and I commend you for that – the chores of having to go to hospital everyday, do this, do that … – all that was a change, right? Mentally, did you not feel that this is different? Others do not have to do this. Did that not make you feel down?”
KL: “Well, let me ask you. Do you think brushing your teeth every morning is a chore? You do not question that. Do you? You get up, brush teeth, take shower etc etc. You may have a car – so you drive to work. Somebody else does not – they walk up to the the bus station or train. Is that a chore for them? Do they feel down? It is all in accepting that this is a standard activity for you.”
RR: “The new normal, so to speak?”
KL: “The new normal”
RR: “But that means that is a change”
KL: “Well, your normal today is not what was normal forty years back. Do you complain about it today? You just have accepted that it is normal for you.”

Lest you think we talked just about cancer and the long view of the road, we also talked about China, India, parental responsibilities – especially how to deal with the fact that two kids can be very very different and also the twenty odd colleagues we had in our Canada office.

In fact, we left on the note that next time we get together, we should get all those colleagues together.

At our watering hole … very little has changed in ten years!
Watching the Sunday NFL game … I remember having done this in four different countries with her!
She can name more players than I can… but I can name more plays than she can!
Over a couple of drinks… sometimes for large values of 2!
But always making time to catch up on the week with all the employees there… as we shut down the place together with them!

After Natasha left, the three of the us went up to the Georgia mountains to have some wine and lunch. We had tried out quite a few spots before – so I chose a new place that I had never heard of before after researching in Google Maps. An hour later, as we pulled into the dirt parking lot, I thought there was one part of the winery building that reminded me of another winery.

As we walked in, I asked the lady if there was another winery in the area that had an outside patio structured exactly the way Kaya (name of the vineyard we were visting) had. She realized what was happening. She mentioned that what is Kaya today used to be Blackstock Winery before. There is a new owner, more area, more vineyards and wholly new constructed building.

That is when I realized that almost ten years back, when we were completely new to Atlanta – the same three of us – Sharmila, Nikita and myself had come visited Blackstock Winery with Frank and Laura (who were the prior owners of our house and with whom we became great friends till Frank passed away suddenly) and had enjoyed a glass of wine there. I remember the wine tasting place and had met the owner – I think David was his name.

In any case, it turns out that the new owner has completely redone the place – and has done a mighty great job – and reopened a few months back.

What a coincidence that to celebrate Sharmila’s birthday, we landed up accidentally at the same spot that we had come to celebrate moving to Atlanta ten years back! What is really funny – the spot Nikita chose today to settle down with her books as we checked out the whole place – there used to be a sofa there those days. And our entire trip there ten years back, Nikita – then barely three years old – had slept in that sofa. Exact same spot!!

I had been struggling with the tamarind paste for quite some time. I must have tried at least four different cocktails and thrown them away after a couple of sips. The tamarind – being very sour – was very difficult to balance out. Finally, I managed to get to something that I liked. With some help from Sharmila.

The inspiration behind this drink goes back to very early days of childhood. On Saturdays, my parents used to be out for work and the three siblings were left home alone. I suspect I was in fifth or sixth grade that time. One of the favorite past times my sister and I had during those days was to make some concoction out of tamarind paste. It used to be inspired by “tetul lozenge” that you could buy for 10 paisa those days. Well, it was less of a lozenge and more of a ball of tamarind paste mixed with all sorts of yummy ingredients and then packed in a plastic wrapper. My sister and I had eventually mastered the art mixing tamarind with the right amount salt, sugar, lime and green chilli. And the three of us used to sit and enjoy it for some time. And somedays, when we did not get the mix right, we would still enjoy it – but with one eye closed – reeling from the tartness of the tamarind.

I was trying to create that taste I remember. I think I have finally managed to get there. The first trick was to get the right amount of tamarind paste – about the amount that you can pick with weighted bar spoon. Then I used brown sugar – two spoons of it. From previous experiments, I can tell you that white sugar did not work well and neither did simple syrup. Then I muddled it in a muddler after throwing some King’s Ginger Liquer (an ounce) of it. Again, Domaine de Canton ginger liqueur did not work so well. I have not tried fresh ginger but my sense is that it would overwhelm the smell.

Jalapenos did not work – it became too spicy. So, finally I settled for an ounce of UV’s Sriracha Vodka. I did throw in a small piece of green chilli before muddling. Finally, a couple of ounces of Vodka and quarter lime worth of squeezed juice. As an alternate, you can try lime infused vodkas. Topped it up with an ounce of soda water, stirred it well and poured it into a cocktail glass.

The taste was almost there but still no cigar. Got Sharmila to try it and she hit it right away – there needed to be a little salt to match the remnants of the sourness. But the challenge was that if I mixed salt in the cocktail – most any cocktail, perhaps with the exception of Bloody Marys – it would completely mess up the taste. So, I finally settled for a margarita style salt on the rim approach.

That worked out excellent. First the salt hitting the tongue and then the tarty liquid coming and diluting it in the mouth with the hint of sweetness and the aroma of chilli and lime made it a very complex but very satisfying experience. The only thing missing in this afternoon was my sister and brother to share it with.

I am going to try this next time with tequila and see if essentially a margarita like approach to tamarind works too.

Now, for the toughest part – what to name it? Would you volunteer to christen it?

With all the flight delays (of which I had more than my share this week) and none of the meals like we used to get before, flying can be onerous sometimes. And then something happens here and there – that makes you grateful to have experienced some people’s attitude during your flights.

A couple of years back, I remember a Delta pilot handing out hand written thank you notes on his business card as we settled down in our seats. This week, on my flight back from New York to Atlanta, I got another thank you note – all personalised and hand written. This one was from our very nice flight attendant – Patrick. He had one for each of the folks sitting up front.

I realize that this is not a corporate practice and was more of an individual effort. All the same, nice touch, Delta! Needless to say, very well done, Patrick!!

Slightly strong and stiff – probably best for cool evenings like today. Gin, absinthe and orange bitters. I think an orange twist would be an appropriate garnish but most literature is suggesting without any garnish.